


i want to grow up (i want to grow old)

by mapped



Series: grow [2]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Healing, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24117298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Patience is a virtue that Aelwyn doesn't have, but what she does have is a girlfriend who can teach it to her.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwen Abernant, Aelwen Abernant/Sam Nightingale
Series: grow [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740139
Comments: 39
Kudos: 119





	i want to grow up (i want to grow old)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macaronidoodles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaronidoodles/gifts).



> This is a sequel to [(i think i'm) ready to take this song off repeat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23864623), and will make most sense if you read that first.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who commented on the first fic! Without all your lovely encouragement I wouldn't be back with more. And thanks especially to Beth who asked for more Sam/Aelwyn! I hope you like this.
> 
> Content note: This fic deals with sex-related trauma. Nothing in explicit detail, but it's still one of the main threads of the fic.
> 
> (Me @ Aelwyn: on GOD we are going to get you a healthier relationship to sex!!)
> 
> Title once again from MUNA - 'Grow'.

Lying in bed at night, Aelwyn thinks about Sam. She thinks about Sam’s hands combing through her hair, and the warmth of Sam’s smile, like sunlit water. She thinks about the smell of Sam’s skin.

Fallinel is an island country with many golden beaches, but even when Aelwyn was little and she still lived there, she never got to make sandcastles or splash around in the shallows. Her parents would take her and Adaine to luncheons in high-class restaurants by the sea—meals overflowing with caviar and oysters and lobster—with perfect views of the bay, and her mother would shudder at the sight of nearly naked children running around shrieking and covered in sand. _So undignified,_ she would say, and Aelwyn would take a deep breath and pull apart her lobster in as dignified a manner as she could manage.

And that smell, the smell of the ocean which was never permitted to Aelwyn—that’s what Sam smells of. Aelwyn can never forget that yearning she felt as a child, to fling herself into the hot sand and roll around in it, to plunge head-first into the waves and let them wash over her. And when she kisses Sam, it feels like that, every time. Like finally having something she was never allowed to have. Like fulfilling a want so deep it lives at the core of her immortal soul, reverberating through the whole of her life, her past and present and future.

Reliving each kiss in her mind, she can’t help the giddy tide of joy that rises in her. She grins so widely her cheeks ache, and she nudges her face into her pillow to hide it, even if nobody can see her.

_So undignified._

The grin slips from her face. She reaches up and touches the ceiling, where she and Adaine have taped strings of fairy lights in the shape of stars, their glow reassuring and steadfast.

“Adaine.”

“Hmm?”

“How do you think Mother and Father would have reacted to me having a… girlfriend?” These are the things she only knows how to ask in the dark. The word _girlfriend_ still feels new in her mouth, like the verbal component of a spell she’s only just started learning, its effect startling and powerful.

“If I’d had a girlfriend,” Adaine’s voice drifts up from below, “I’m guessing they would probably have been assholes about it like they were with everything else. But with you… Probably they would’ve been like, ‘Well as long as you don’t mention it in front of us again, and definitely not in front of all the important people in our circle either, you can do whatever you like, dear. Oh, and as long as you keep your grades up, of course.’”

Aelwyn never told her parents about any of the boys, of course. The boys had been in the same category as the parties. The drinking, the drugs. All related and concurrent things. Her parents only cared about her doing well at Hudol, and she did, exceptionally well. If she’d had a boyfriend who loved her and it had distracted her from being top of her class, she’s sure it would have outraged her parents more than her snorting dragonspice and fucking guys whose names she didn’t remember in the morning, letting them hurt her just to feel something.

But she doesn’t know how her parents would have felt about her being gay, specifically. It doesn’t feel like something that would have been acceptable to them. And why, after all this time, does she still crave their approval?

“Anyway, who cares how they would’ve reacted?” Adaine continues. Sisters, Aelwyn has come to know, detect each other’s thoughts without even having to cast the spell. “Fuck them. I’m happy for you, Aelwyn. _You’re_ happy. That’s what matters.”

Aelwyn imagines what it might’ve been like to show up at home—the home that no longer exists except in a corner of her mind, where she still visits, from time to time, walking through its empty rooms, trailing her fingertips over phantom furniture—holding Sam’s hand. Kissing Sam at the dinner table in front of her parents. She imagines the grimness on her mother’s face, the scandal on her father’s.

Is that progress? Wanting to spite them instead of please them? Even if it means she still misses their presence, one way or another?

She comes back to the room she’s really in. She comes back to the top bunk in the bedroom she shares with Adaine, in a tower in Mordred Manor. She dangles her arm over the side of the bed, and she feels Adaine’s hand grasp hers and squeeze tightly.

 _Fuck them,_ she thinks, in Adaine’s voice, which is like her own but infinitely gentler, even in anger. _I’m happy._

* * *

Happiness, however, is something that she doesn’t have a particularly firm hold on.

She used to think she understood sex. She was good at making boys want her. She knew how to dress and smile and inflect her voice in just the right way. It was a skill like any other. And she had watched enough porn to know how to act in the bedroom. What guys expected of her. She could follow a script, easy.

But she and Sam have been going out for over a month, and they still haven’t had sex. She tried to put on more provocative clothes around Sam, at first; she wasn’t sure if Sam even noticed, until one day they were making out and Sam said, in a low voice, “You’re so hot, and I’m so turned on, but I’m not ready for sex yet, okay? And even if you keep wearing these tiny skirts around me I’m not going to change my mind any faster, I’m not some dumbass guy who can’t keep it in my pants.”

“But you think I’m hot in these skirts,” Aelwyn said, quietly.

“I think you’re incredibly hot no matter what you’re wearing, Aelwyn,” Sam whispered in her ear, and then kissed her neck right below, and Aelwyn melted into the rug beneath her.

And now she’s in Sam’s bed, and Sam is topless and beautiful and _ready_ , and Aelwyn is suddenly unsure of she’s supposed to do. She takes off her own clothes, because that seems straightforward enough, right, the obvious next step in the procedure, but then she’s naked in a bed that isn’t hers, and Sam—

Sam—

Sam’s hand is sliding up her thigh, and she can’t—

Her mind flickers, and then she isn’t even in her own mind anymore.

When she comes back, she’s crying. Sam is holding her, and she’s crying, and it’s not like they haven’t been here before, but at least she was _clothed_ the last few times this happened, which is a luxury she doesn’t have now, and it’s humiliating. It’s a miracle Sam’s still here, still holding her. 

Once she’s stopped crying enough to speak, she says, “Well, I see I’ll have a huge amount to discuss with my therapist this week.”

Sam kisses her forehead. “What’s wrong? Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know.” She wants to climb out of the window and leave forever, but she’s not wearing any clothes, which proves a sufficient deterrent. “Isn’t it hilarious that I was so impatient for you—the inexperienced virgin!—to be ready to have sex with me, and now that you finally are, it turns out that _I’m_ apparently not ready for it? The universe is truly playing a cruel joke on me.”

“That’s okay.” Sam throws something over Aelwyn’s shoulders; it feels soft and worn, whatever it is. “We’ll figure it out.”

“You keep saying that.” Aelwyn rubs her hands over her face. “I would like to fast forward to the part where we have it figured out already.”

“You _are_ the most impatient elf I’ve ever met.” Sam picks up a top. It’s Aelwyn’s, not hers, but she pulls it on anyway, and it suits her. She sits back against the headboard and pats the pillow next to her.

Aelwyn scooches up, at the same time investigating what it is that Sam draped over her back. It’s an oversized sleep shirt, buttery yellow striped with white, pilling all over. Aelwyn shrugs it on, doing up one of the buttons, and it’s most comfortable thing she’s ever worn. She presses her nose into the sleeve, and wants to cry all over again, because it smells so strongly of Sam.

Sam, who rests her head on Aelwyn’s shoulder and laces their fingers together.

Aelwyn thinks, _I don’t deserve you touching me like this, I’m awful, I’m going to steal your shirt—_ A hysterical giggle escapes her throat. Okay, maybe her thoughts are a little absurd. But she _is_ going to steal this shirt. “You’re just very gorgeous and I want you in a way I’ve never wanted anybody before.” She tries to sound as sullen as possible, but even as the words leave her mouth she knows she’s made a mistake, because it doesn’t matter what the tone of her voice is. The words themselves are too earnest.

“I want you too,” Sam says, and Aelwyn can hear Sam’s smile. “But hey, we’ve already got each other. You’ve _got_ to stop being so obsessed with my virginity, okay? Weirdo.”

The wryness in Sam’s voice makes Aelwyn smile, too. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? They had me making this creepy Detect Maiden spell, I can’t _not_ worry about the fact that you’re still a virgin. Now if you get sacrificed to any ambitious evil overlords, it will be _my_ fault for not helping you lose your viginity when I had the chance.”

Sam fully cracks up laughing and shoves Aelwyn. “This is so stupid. I can’t believe you’re my girlfriend. You’re the worst.” Breathlessly she kisses Aelwyn, and oh, that’s still wonderful. Aelwyn thinks maybe she could create an entirely new abjuration spell just from this kiss alone, something that could protect her for the rest of eternity.

Laying her head on Sam’s chest, her lips still tingling from the kiss, Aelwyn plays with a strand of Sam’s hair, like a cool stream flowing over her hand. “Are you actually the only real maiden remaining in your party?”

“No.” Sam starts counting on her fingers. “Antiope and Katya both had summer flings last year. Then I believe Ostentatia and Danielle both slept with Skrank, which, _ew_. They’ve tried to explain it to me, but I just don’t get the appeal. I think I might be too gay to get it. Zelda and Gorgug started sleeping together after spring break. But Penny’s still a virgin. She does have a boyfriend now, they went to prom together, but she doesn’t really want to have sex yet. She keeps saying how virginity is a misogynistic concept, and she’s right, you know.”

Aelwyn rolls her eyes, even if she doesn’t entirely disagree. “Oh, what was prom like? I can’t remember if you’ve told me much about it.”

“That’s because it wasn’t very eventful. Which was kind of a relief, if I’m being honest, even if we did spend most of the night talking about how nothing could beat the prom where we hacked a dragon to death. I didn’t have a date. Katya and I just went as friends. It was fun, but I did think about Penelope a lot. I guess it was inevitable, but I really missed her. I kept thinking about how the prom the year before should have been our prom. I mean, I know that even without all the eternal prom king and queen nonsense, she would have been with Dayne all night, but I still kind of wished… I don’t know, I always had this fantasy of dancing with her at prom.”

Sam’s never outright stated that she had a crush on Penelope, but Aelwyn’s worked it out by now. She strokes Sam’s collarbone, trying her best to convey comfort through that touch alone. “Hudol doesn’t do prom, so I’ve never really understood what the fuss is about. But I suppose I’ll have to go to the Aguefort prom next year.” She’s starting her senior year at Aguefort next week. It seemed so far off at first, something she agreed to months ago, too distant to be real, but now it’s _soon_ , looming and terrible.

“You don’t _have_ to go to prom,” Sam says, amused, blowing a puff of air against Aelwyn’s temple. “It’s not compulsory or anything. No one’s going to force you.”

“Oh. Good. Glad I can go right ahead and skip that experience then.”

“It’s just a big party. You might enjoy it.”

“I’m not especially fond of parties these days.”

What she _is_ fond of: how her lace crop top looks on Sam, and how Sam’s ratty sleep shirt looks on her in turn. But most of all, the expression on Sam’s face when she’s gazing at Aelwyn, like a wave folding contentedly back into the sea.

* * *

Starting at Aguefort is pretty overwhelming, but she has her weekly therapy sessions, and she knows where Jawbone’s office is. She sits with the Bad Kids at lunch, and she goes to Kristen’s LGBTQ+ student union meetings even if she thinks they sound awfully tedious. They aren’t, as it turns out, and eventually she has people who aren’t the Bad Kids to sit with at lunch.

The amount of homework the teachers at Aguefort give her is laughable compared to the mountain of prep she had to do for Hudol, but she’s not complaining. Or rather, she did complain, initially, but that only got her dirty looks from everyone else in her class, and while she’s not aiming for popularity she’s at the very least trying to avoid the fate of being murdered and left in a ditch somewhere. That’s a genuine possibility at Aguefort, she feels.

She used to have so little free time, when she was at Hudol. Now she has so much of it. Guilt pools in her stomach like black ink spilled from a bottle whenever she’s sitting around in the kitchen, hovering on the periphery of the Bad Kids and their madness—this is why she doesn’t want to sit with them at lunch, she already sees far too much of them outside of school. She even _enjoys_ their madness a tiny bit, though she would never admit it. But it still feels like she’s wasting time.

She ought to be studying, but she’s already finished her homework, but she could be doing extra research, obviously, but she’s spent every day since she came back from the Nightmare King’s Forest reading book after book even though nobody assigned her any of that, but—

“Do you remember how you asked me about all of this?” she says to Sam, gesturing to the stacks of gigantic tomes on the floor of her study. “About having to work hard to study magic?”

Sam nods.

“I’m fed up with the voice in my head that tells me I’m worthless if I don’t work hard.” Aelwn puts her head down on her desk. “It was all right for a few months, everyone told me I had to take time to recover, I felt like I was on some kind of extended vacation—but now I’m back at school, and worse, I’m at a school that I’ve been told my whole life isn’t good enough for me, and now I have to wonder if _I’m_ even good enough for it, because the definition of what good means keeps _shifting_ , and there’s no way for me to keep up, and— I wish I could simply rest for a second without feeling like shit about myself. I wish I was a sorceress, like you.”

Sam sighs, and tugs on Aelwyn’s ankles. “Time to come lie down on the Rug of Emotion with me.”

“I thought it was the Rug of Makeouts?”

“It’s also that. It can be both.”

Aelwyn lies down on the rug, and Sam curls up next to her, nuzzling her neck. “You can’t be a sorceress, but that doesn’t mean you have to be just a wizard. You’re at Aguefort! Go check out some other classes. Maybe you’ll find something that doesn’t stress you out as much.”

“Wait, people do that at Aguefort? Take other classes?”

“Yeah, haven’t you been paying attention? I’m pretty sure like at least half of the Bad Kids are multiclassing.”

“Well, at Hudol, students have to attend the classes that are on their timetable or there are _consequences_. I didn’t think I could just stroll around the school wandering into different classes, that seems… illegal.”

Sam snorts. “You’ve done far more illegal things.” She kisses Aelwyn’s cheek. “Come on, you’re going to live for hundreds of years, you need to learn to let yourself chill out for a minute.”

Aelwyn considers this. She considers her girlfriend, and the Rug of Emotion-slash-Makeouts, and she makes the conscious and effortful decision to allow herself to keep lying there, her nose in Sam’s long dark hair, her fingers tracing meaningless circles on Sam’s back.

 _None of this is wasted time,_ she thinks to herself, with glittering determination.

* * *

It’s a warm day late in September, one of those days when you can still hear the last notes of summer in the sun-blessed sky, and Sam’s driving Aelwyn somewhere. A secret, she said. Her hair ripples in the breeze through the open car window, and as she turns up the radio and sings along, Aelwyn wonders if there’s a way for her to crawl into Sam’s voice and live inside of it forever.

The secret turns out to be a secluded hot spring in the woods, a pocket of clear water hidden among the trees. “It’s not the sea,” Sam says. “But it’s almost as good.” She peels off her dress and steps into the water in one liquid movement, so graceful that she barely disturbs the surface of the spring at all. It’s as though the water wants to swallow her in. Aelwyn knows the feeling.

Sam is beckoning, and so Aelwyn shimmies out of her clothes and joins Sam. The temperature of the water is as perfect as the day, and Aelwyn shivers in pleasure, drawing her knees up to her chest as she sits with her back to the bank. “Are you sure we aren’t intruding upon some vengeful naiad’s domain?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve been coming here a long time.” Sam takes Aelwyn’s hand and kisses her knuckles, looks at her with the softest of smiles. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

It’s far from the first time anyone’s ever called Aelwyn beautiful. It’s not even the first time Sam’s called her that. Praise used to make her preen and gloat, and she counted every compliment like dragons count coins in their hoard, but none of it really _mattered_. None of it made her feel truly better about herself. Each compliment only made her more desperate for the next, and she was always calculating how to contort herself to earn more praise. Now when Sam calls her beautiful, she feels illuminated by it. It should be as simple as a Light spell, one of the first things she learned to cast as a child, a mere cantrip. But it isn’t. It’s more like emerging from the unending dark of the Forest of the Nightmare King and realizing the sun still exists. Blinking helplessly in its bright, life-giving rays.

Besides, it’s ridiculous that Sam is calling Aelwyn beautiful when she’s the one who looks like she’s formed of the spring itself, her skin shimmering blue-green, her eyes drowning and deep.

“Are you sure _you_ aren’t the vengeful naiad?” Aelwyn murmurs.

“Oh, I can’t promise that.” Sam’s smile takes on a sly edge. She splashes Aelwyn and Aelwyn shrieks, splashing her back. No magic. Just her hands, just her body propelling her forward in the water. She’s _playing_ , wrestling with Sam whose skin is more slippery than ever, and there’s nothing dignified about it.

She loves it. Loves when Sam drenches her hair, loves when Sam drags her further down into the water, loves when Sam pushes her up against a rock and kisses her, and she can almost taste Sam’s magic on her tongue, pure and crystalline as the spring.

When she finally manages to summon enough self-control to break the kiss, she says, “Well, this is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Hmm, same.” Sam’s hand is lazily caressing Aelwyn’s waist, and Aelwyn is _so_ into this, but. She and Sam still haven’t properly talked about that time she freaked out when they tried to have sex, mostly because Aelwyn hasn’t felt ready. Which is ironic, considering she couldn’t really relate to how Sam wasn’t ready for sex before. Aelwyn never understood this thing about needing to be _ready_. The first time she had sex, she did it because she was drunk and there was a guy who was clearly attracted to her and she was tired of being good. She wanted to be bad in every way she could. She never thought about whether she was ready, or not. Her life kept happening to her either way; nothing had ever waited for her to be ready.

But she understands it now. There are people in her life with more patience than her, and they are willing to grant that patience to her. They are willing to wait for her, even if she has never known how to wait for herself.

Sam is always there, waiting.

“I want to have sex with you,” Aelwyn says, slowly. “But it’s just… I know that the sex I used to have wasn’t exactly healthy, but I never quite realized how badly it fucked me up until… Well, you know. I’ve been talking to my therapist about it. And I think I just never felt very in control of things when I had sex before. I let things happen to me that I’m not sure I completely wanted to happen. It’s difficult to work out what I want, sometimes. Easier to let somebody else dictate. It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.”

Sam’s eyes are like the fine mist that shrouds the cemetery by Mordred Manor in the mornings. She tucks a damp curl of Aelwyn’s hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry you went through all of that.”

“Yes. Well, I’ve been working on it, and I’ve been”—she lowers her lashes—“touching myself. Thinking about you.”

Sam flushes, her cheeks turquoise.

“I have that old sleep shirt of yours,” Aelwyn says, relishing this now that the worst part is over. “And it smells so much like you.”

“ _That’s_ where it went?” Sam groans. “Aelwyn, you—”

“Shh.” Aelwyn brushes her thumb over Sam’s hipbone. “I’ve been thinking about what I want. And I want us to work on getting to a place where I’m okay with you touching me wherever, but in the meantime…” She kisses Sam, running her hand along the inside of Sam’s thigh, and when she feels Sam’s legs spread open for her, her breath catches in her throat. Sam stares at Aelwyn, wide-eyed and biting her lip, _waiting_ , and Aelwyn aches with all the desire filling her body, like when she’s gathering all the magic within her for the highest-level spell she’s got, tense and _ready_ , ready, ready.

She thinks about what she’s been imagining, in the evenings after Sam’s gone, lying alone on the rug in her study. “Let me go down on you?” Her fingers trail up and down Sam’s thigh, just very lightly scratching with her nails, and she watches Sam’s mouth fall open. “It’ll be different to anything I’ve ever done with guys, and it’s the one thing I’m certain I want. I’ve been, you know, thinking about it.” She licks her lips. “Night after night.”

“Fuck, Aelwyn,” Sam says, leaning her forehead against Aelwyn’s. “You’re going to kill me before you’ve even started.”

“So is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Sam breathes, and they kiss all the way back to solid ground, where Sam lies down on a blanket that she brought with her, and Aelwyn gets to do the one thing she’s been thinking about, the one thing she’s never been more sure she wants, to her beautiful, beautiful, probably-not-a-vengeful-naiad girlfriend. If she doesn’t quite know what she’s doing at first, Sam doesn’t seem to mind at all, and for once Aelwyn isn’t frustrated that she can’t just skip ahead to the part where she’s got it figured out. She can concede—silently, just to herself—that there’s a peculiar kind of nervous wonder in this fumbling, tentative exploration, too.

* * *

She comes home from Aguefort one day to a whole crowd of people jumping up and down and screaming “Happy birthday” at her. Her immediate instinct is to glare at Adaine, who _had_ to have orchestrated this, since she’s the only one who knows Aelwyn’s birthday, but Adaine only makes a face at her and showers her in confetti. Minor Illusion confetti, but still.

“You’re nineteen!” Adaine yells, way too loud and hugging her. “And you never got to celebrate your eighteenth birthday, so I wanted to make sure we celebrate this one properly.” She beams at Aelwyn.

Aelwyn knows how she spent her eighteenth birthday. Even if she doesn’t remember it, she feels the echo of it in her mind still. The ruined city, the charred debris. She doesn’t want to be reminded. Thankfully, she realizes, there’s one thing this crowd is good for. She doesn’t have to think about anything she doesn’t want to.

So she smiles at Adaine, who hands her something gift-wrapped.

A gift.

“You don’t have to open it now,” Adaine says, in a eager tone that suggests she means otherwise.

Aelwyn takes the hint and unwraps the gift, careful not to rip the paper. She wants to preserve it, every bit of it. She can’t remember if she’s ever received a gift from Adaine—she’s certainly not given any to Adaine in years.

The gift is not big in size; it almost fits the palm of her hand. Underneath the sparkly blue wrapping paper are more layers of crinkly tissue paper, which rustle satisfyingly as she prises the bracelet from their center. It’s a plain band of rose gold, and as she lifts it to the light, she sees engraved on the inside two words that only she will know are there: _Big sister_.

“Oh no, this is so cheesy,” she says, even as she feels the prickle of emotion in her throat, the tears brimming in her eyes. “I hate it. Why am I crying? Adaine. Adaine, stop grinning and go _away_ before I cast Ray of Sickness on you.”

Adaine’s grin, if anything, only gets more gleeful. “I’m not going away until you put it on.”

Aelwyn puts it on. It fits perfectly around her wrist, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever take it off. It better be of good, durable dwarven make, or Adaine’s going to be sorry. It better lasts hundreds of years.

“Now we’re going to stuff our faces with cake,” Adaine says.

There’s singing, which is truly vexing to have to stand in the middle of and listen to, and then there are candles to blow out, and a wish to make. Standing in front of the cake, Aelwyn panics, not knowing what to wish for. Before, she used to wish for things like—good grades. Getting her scholarship to Hudol.

As she blows out the last candle with her eyes closed, she can think only of sunlight and water and love.

Which isn’t a wish, but it’s something.

She feels an arm slide around her waist, and she opens her eyes. It’s Sam, with a big tupperware container in her hand. “Happy birthday!” She gives Aelwyn a peck on the cheek before setting the tupperware down on the table next to the cake. “I baked you cookies. I heard from Adaine that there were strictly no sweet treats in the Abernant household, and that made me sad. Pen and I used to bake these cookies together at her house all the time. They’re the best, trust me.”

“You heard right from Adaine. Cake was exclusively for birthdays only. I mean, it’s not like—” She stops herself before she finishes her sentence. She was going to say, _It’s not like I have a sweet tooth or anything._ But she realized how that would sound, when Sam’s just gone to all this effort for her. And anyway. Just because she was never allowed to eat any cookies growing up doesn’t mean that she can’t appreciate them now.

She kisses Sam’s cheek in return and says, simply, “Thank you.”

She cuts the cake neatly and doles out slices of it to everybody, because she can’t forget her manners. Around her the party is already descending into the madness typical of the Bad Kids. Sam has drifted over to a corner to talk to Ragh and Tracker, who have both only recently returned from their trip to Fallinel. If Aelwyn’s being honest, she’s still not a hundred percent clear what they were doing there. She has a very singular focus and she’s only able to care about a select few people at a time. She’s learning how to expand that, but it doesn’t come naturally to her at all. She knows, though, that Sam and Ragh have become good friends the past few months, despite the distance, and it makes her happy to see Sam laughing with other people. It always makes her happy to see Sam laugh.

She opens the tupperware and takes a cookie. As she bites into it, Adaine appears at her side, exclaiming, “Ooh, cookies!” She takes a cookie too. They sit down at the table and Aelwyn starts talking about multiclassing, a topic she’s often discussing with Adaine these days. She still hasn’t figured out what she really wants to do. It took a while just to get over her initial prejudice against many of the other classes, since it’s been drilled into her from childhood that wizards are superior because of their intelligence.

But now that she no longer thinks of herself as too clever for any of the other classes, she still has trouble deciding. Making decisions for herself has never been one of her strong suits.

She was skeptical of all the meditation that monks seem to have to do, but she actually went to some of the meditation sessions and she didn’t completely hate it. She found it frankly off-putting how _keen_ paladins are, but now she thinks maybe there’s something to it. To being committed to a cause.

By the time she and Adaine have gone through all the classes and listed their pros and cons, between the two of them they’ve consumed most of the cookies in the giant tupperware. Aelwyn only notices when she dips her hand in and hits the plastic bottom of the container.

“Wow, these cookies are really good,” Adaine says, licking crumbs from her fingers. “I never thought I’d say this, but they’re just as good as Cathilda’s. Your girlfriend is amazing.”

Aelwyn agrees. She wonders if it’s too late to go back and amend her wish, because she wants to wish for this. For more velvet-lined evenings of sitting around doing nothing but talking to her little sister and eating delicious cookies that her girlfriend has baked for her. She really didn’t think cookies could be this good, but they’re _so_ good, soft and chewy and perfectly chocolatey. 

Someone’s hooked their crystal up to a speaker and it’s playing faintly familiar songs, and Aelwyn finally realizes these are songs that Fig’s been humming around the house all summer while she’s been writing her new album. This _is_ Fig’s new album. And Aelwyn knows Fig is normally more of a rock kind of person, which Aelwyn most definitely is not, but these songs.

These songs.

Sam meanders over, glancing at the tupperware and raising her eyebrows. “You guys ate them all up _this_ quickly? Oh good, you saved one for me at least.” She reaches for the last cookie, but Aelwyn grabs her hand.

“Will you dance with me?” she asks.

Sam’s mouth quirks in a pleased smile. “Sure. This music is really pretty, huh.”

Aelwyn gets up from her chair and wraps her arms around Sam, and they sway together to a song that Fig wrote for Ayda, about rebirth and how love makes you a better person, about something shining with its own true light through the ashes.

“Next year,” Aelwyn murmurs, her mouth by Sam’s ear, “you can be my date to prom and you’ll be able to have that prom dance you’ve always wanted.”

“Next year? We’re thinking that far ahead?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Okay then. Will I be getting a promposal too or is this it?”

Aelwyn’s only frame of reference for the term _promposal_ was when Penelope went on and on about how she wished Dayne would put some effort into one and Aelwyn naturally tuned her out, so she still doesn’t precisely know what a promposal would entail or whether Sam is being absolutely serious, but Sam’s cheek is touching hers, and Sam’s embrace is everything Aelwyn not-quite-wished for when she blew out those candles. Sunlight and water and—

“I love you,” she says, and maybe it’s just the melody threading through the air, the rich, wine-dark thrum of Fig’s bass guitar and the slight tremble in Fig’s voice when she sings, vulnerable and sweet and utterly honest, but maybe this is the best party Aelwyn’s ever been to, and maybe love isn’t so awful and difficult and treacherous after all. Or maybe even if it is, it’s worth it.

Sam pulls back, shock on her face transforming into joy, like a bird taking flight, and Aelwyn thinks, maybe she does know how to love. Or maybe it’s not a matter of knowing how, not like a wizard learning a spell. She just loves, the way Sam just does magic, just pulls on something that already swims innately through her veins and sends it soaring out into the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I still can't believe this grew into a whole 11k series, but I guess I just have a lot of feelings about Aelwyn. Thanks for reading and having these feelings with me! <3
> 
> Comments are really appreciated, and please feel free to come talk to me [@reluming](http://reluming.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


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